Someday We'll Try To Walk Upright
by Nirav
Summary: The dissolution of Quinn and Puck, set to Eve 6.


_I wanna put my tender heart in a blender/ watch it spin around to a beautiful oblivion/ rendezvous, then I'm through with you _(Inside Out)

Three days after the school year ends and the glee club parts of the summer, still smarting from their decimation at Regionals, he sees her at the gym. He's dutifully restacking weights and picking up the towels patrons have left strewn around—it's bitch work and he hates it, but it fills the hours when there aren't pools to clean and they let him work out for free—and he sees, out of the corner of his eye, a familiar flash of a blond ponytail bouncing along to a brisk pace on a treadmill.

He doesn't know why it surprises him that she's back in the gym so soon, even though he had been standing right beside her when she was discharged and the doctor advised she take it easy for a month or two. Quinn had always cared far too much about her physical appearance to let something like doctor's orders or the possibility of pain get in the way of her pursuit of it.

(Looking back, later on when he's angry and bitter all over again, he won't be able to stop himself from acknowledging the fact that for all of her flaws, Quinn had been unbearably cautious with and protective of her body when their daughter was growing inside of it.)

He keeps his head down as he shuffles around gathering towels and straightening the weights and cleaning off machines, thankful that his mohawk isn't quite back yet and from behind he looks like any number of personal trainers in the gym. By the time his shift is over, she's finished her run and has commandeered a corner of the free weights section and a medicine ball and is putting herself through a painful-looking routine that's clearly intended to bring the lean lines of muscle that had once graced her stomach.

Before he leaves, he barters with another employee to trade shifts so he can work the same time the next day, and then he spends the entire evening cooped up in his room, strumming at his guitar and staring at the ceiling instead of going out to any one of the parties being thrown around town.

He keeps out of her line of sight while she once again runs on the treadmill, headphones in and feet impacting lightly and eyes locked on a blank spot on the wall across the room from her. His shift ends and he positions himself on a rowing machine near the door, turning up his own headphones as the familiar push-and-pull distracts him from his nerves, and waits for her to finish.

She doesn't see him when she's leaving, her head bowed tiredly from the workout she's just finished; he scrambles to loosen the straps over his feet and leaps up, jogging out into the hallway after her. He ignores the knot of nervousness in his stomach because he's determined, once and for all, to sort things out with Quinn so they can just _move on_.

"Hey," he says dumbly at her back, and winces when he sees her jerk to a halt, her spine stiffening noticeably. She turns slowly, her face schooled into a blank mask, and he fights the urge to take a step back. "Hey," he says again. "Can we talk for a minute?"

"What would we possibly have to talk about?" she asks coolly. The ice in her voice is belayed by the fact that, as bland as her expression is, her eyes are tired and afraid.

"Don't do that," he throws back at her, voice low as he steps in closer. She crosses her arms protectively across her stomach, and he stares at how her hands momentarily halt and tremble over the space where their daughter had once been. "That's not fair to either of us. We have to talk about it sometime."

"No," she snaps. "We don't. She's gone, Puck. We're not her parents. She's not—she's not our—"

"That's crap," he says, just as shortly. "She may be with Shelby, but she's _our_ daughter and you know it. You can't ignore her."

"I have to," she says, her voice cracking.

"No," he says forcefully. "We need to sort it out. Things happened with us, Quinn, and we can't forget them. We can't forget her."

She stares at him, her shoulders slumped and curved in on themselves, as if she's trying to make herself disappear, eyes bright, her mask faded. "Okay," she says finally. It hangs between them, and he doesn't even try to pretend that he's not holding his breath. "Just…not now, okay?"

"You promise?" he says before he can stop himself, somewhere between childish and doubtful. His chest loosens the tiniest bit when she nods.

"Yeah." Her hands fall from where they'd been wrapped around her, and she straightens back up, mask sliding back into place. She turns around and strides off without saying good-bye.

"I'm not my dad," he calls after her without meaning to. He sees her falter, her breath hitching, even though she doesn't turn around this time. "I would've been good to you. Both of you."

She peers over her shoulder at him, and despite the last year of frustration and anger and the empty feelings of worthlessness he felt around her, he remembers suddenly the first time he saw her—during summer training before freshman year, when a beautiful new blond girl was outrunning the rest of the Cheerios while the football team took a water break—and he decided he had to have her for himself.

He would have given up everything for her, even though time and again she chose everything over him.

"I know," she says finally. She walks off again, and this time he has nothing else to say that could make her stop.

_You can try to break me down or start a fight/ but I'm not gonna let you win/ I'm more than glad to take one on the chin, babe/ As long as I've got you attention, save me _(Not Gonna Be Alone Tonight)

She ignores him for the rest of the week, and he grinds his teeth together and lifts more weight than he should, determined to make her come to him this time. He's the one whose taken every step forward, and as much as he wants to figure out what the hell is going on with them, he's tired of being the one to make all the effort.

His resolve falters when he's out driving around on a Thursday night at midnight, windows down and music blaring in his headphones because his stereo is busted, and sees her sitting on the roof of her car in the park he's passing. The sickly yellow light from the street lamp she's parked under illuminates the white of her sweatshirt, tingeing it almost green, and she has her knees pulled up to her chest, chin resting tiredly atop them.

He pulls into the parking lot and stops next to her, climbing silently out of the truck and leaning on the hood as he stares at her. He wants to talk, to yell, to make her explain to him why she wants to forget about Beth and why she never gave him the time of day and why she thought Finn was such a better a choice. He wants to know why she moved in with Mercedes when he'd been sleeping on the couch and working every hour of the day he could to help pay the doctors' bills and trying to talk to her every night just so she would know that he didn't just care about sex. He wants to know _why_ he was never good enough for anything but a drunk fuck to make her feel pretty.

Words are roiling in his stomach, coarse and inelegant as always, and as they finally start to break free from his stubbornness and bubble their way to the surface, she finally looks over at him and speaks.

"I can't ever sleep anymore." Her voice is hoarse and scratchy, as if she hasn't spoken for days. "Ever since I came home from the hospital. Everything feels to big without her."

Every trace of his own anger and frustration swoops out of him, leaving an empty hollow in his chest as the fact that she looks absolutely broken, and he suddenly hates himself for all of his resentment. He makes his way around his truck and slides up onto the hood of the car next to her, laying back against the windshield.

"Me either," he finally says. His breath catches momentarily, and he swallows drily before continuing. "I haven't slept in my bed since you moved out," he admits.

She's silent, turning to look at him dully. He can't find the courage to hold her gaze, and stares instead at the hazy sky above them. The sound of crickets and a dog barking and a few cars driving past fills the space between them as second slide into minutes, until suddenly she's leapt off the car and is glaring at him, fists pressed to her hips.

"I hate you," she spits out. "You don't get to sit there and look sad about this, okay? All of this is your fault. You said you had protection. You told me everything would be _fine_. You got me _pregnant_, you jackass, so you don't get to sit there talking about how hard it is for _you_. I'm the one who got kicked out, I'm the one who lost her family, I'm the one who had to carry her for nine months and give birth to her."

He flinches at every accusation thrown out at him, the words cracking across his face like a slap. More and more words are flying out of her mouth at him, anger and disgust and blame beating against him, and he can't distinguish a single word from another because all he can do is stare at her and think that maybe she hates him for not having a condom half as much as he hates himself.

(Because he likes to think, some days when his hands don't itch to hold seven pounds four ounces of tiny blond Beth Fabray Puckerman and he doesn't have to throw himself into work or playing guitar or alcohol to stop himself from driving to Shelby Corcoran's house and taking his daughter back, that if he'd had a condom, if she'd never gotten pregnant, if they'd had a chance to _talk_ about the whole thing, that maybe—just maybe—she would've given him a chance to be the boyfriend that Finn hadn't been because he was too enamored with Rachel's smile.)

She finally runs out of words and stands there, her hands hanging limply at her sides and chest heaving from the oxygen she's deprived herself from yelling. He numbly moves to stand in front of her, looking down and wondering how someone so small compared to him can make him feel like he's the size of an ant. His mouth opens and closes several times, his voice starting and stopping, as he tries to find a way to verbalize everything he's thinking.

Instead, all that comes out is a croaked "I'm sorry", his voice cracking in the middle like he's in the seventh grade all over again. She stares up at him, eyes filled with something that isn't quite acceptance and isn't quite anger, but might be a little bit of forgiveness, and without any warning her knees start to shake and her entire body sways. He moves instinctively, catching her before she has a chance to fall and scooping her up easily. She's nothing but skin and bone these days, and feels terrifyingly small in his arms.

She struggles briefly, snapping halfheartedly at him to put her down, but he just tightens his hold on her and tells her to be quiet. He deposits her in the passenger seat of his truck and grabs her purse and keys out of her car, locking it and handing them to her before making his way back into the driver's seat.

She's silent as he drives them to his house. He takes her to his room and hands her one of his t-shirts to sleep in; she watches without a word as he hesitates in the doorway before closing the door behind him and returning to the couch he's been so familiar with for the last six months.

Half an hour later, he's laying on his back with his eyes closed and counting sheep in his head when he hears her padding into the room. She pauses beside him, and he's about to open his eyes when he feels her climbing over him and sliding between his side and the back of the couch, her arm coming around his stomach as her head rests on his shoulder.

It's warm and comfortable and the first time he's felt like he could sleep well on this lumpy couch. He's finally drifting off to sleep when he feels her fingers fisting briefly in the arms of his t-shirt and her breath skitters across his ear, her words echoing into his dreams.

"I never hated you."

_I promise not to—try not to—fuck with your mind/ I promise not to mind if you go your way and I go mine/ I promise not to lie if I'm looking you straight in the eye/ I promise not to—try not to—let you down _(Promise)

He wakes before she does in the morning, to the nothing less than terrifying site of his mother glaring down at them furiously. His eyes widen in a slight panic as she sees her taking a deep breath that he knows will precede a royal verbal whipping, and pleads with her silently to wait. Her glare redoubles as he carefully extracts himself from where Quinn has a foot hooked around his calf and a hand gripping his shirt; he pauses to tug the blanket up over her before obediently following his mother onto the patio behind the kitchen and lets her whisper-shout in half-Hebrew about him never learning his lesson.

By the time Quinn wakes up, his mom is off to work—having accepted his assurances that he wasn't sleeping with Quinn and that he was trying to fix things with something that looked like begrudging pride in her eyes—and his sister has been picked up by her carpool for the summer camp she's attending at the YMCA. He's sitting on the floor in front of the couch, playing Super Mario on mute, when she finally stirs behind him.

"Hey," he says quietly. He pauses the game and shifts to face her, and it hits him a bit like a hammer to look at her. He'd forgotten how much younger she looked when she woke up, how the perpetual armor she holds tightly to herself hasn't formed quite yet and her hair is tangled and messy and her eyes are too sleepy to be anything but soft. She's always beautiful, but it almost hurt to look at her when she's this _pretty_.

"Hi," she rasps, voice gravelly with sleep. She hasn't sat up yet, still curled on the couch in one of his t-shirts that's four sizes too big for her and a blanket wrapped around her; she looks sleepy and approachable and for the first time since she moved out of his house those months ago, he feels the overwhelming urge to kiss her, to touch her, to be with her.

Instead, he clenches his hands into fists and swallows the lump that was forming in his throat. "How're you feeling?"

"Okay," she whispers. "I…better," she adds after a few long seconds. "I think."

He nods shortly, not trusting himself to speak when the barest hints of a smile tug at the corners of her lips. He pushes himself to his feet and busies himself with shutting down his X-Box and stowing the controller in its box beside the television. By the time the cords are wrapped up and the wireless controller's battery is in the charger—he spent too many hours working crappy jobs to earn the money for his games to not take care of them, just like his guitar and his truck—he thinks that he might be able to speak without sounding like a twelve year old, and turns to face her.

She's sitting on the couch, knees pulled up inside the giant shirt she's wearing, looking as tiny as she had had the night before as she watches him, and she beats him to the punch.

"Thank you," she says delicately. "For last night. It was…really good of you."

"I'm not a Lima loser," he says, unable to keep the annoyance out of his voice. "I'm not some jerk who doesn't care. I've never been that guy, not with you."

She bites down on her lip at his small outburst—and oh, how he hates it when she does that, because it takes him back to being stretched out half on top of her, his hands skimming along her ribcage and her fingers digging into his shoulder blades as he pauses above her one last time before they take the plunge—and takes a deep breath, letting the air back out in a slow, metered exhale.

"You're right," she finally says. "I shouldn't have ever called you that. And I'm—I'm sorry."

He tries to ignore the way she stumbles over the words, and takes a deep breath of his own before moving to sit on the opposite end of the couch.

"I wasn't lying when I said I loved you," he says after a few long minutes. Even though he knows that she knows, the word _love_ still feels heavy and burdensome on his tongue, the single syllable weighting down his entire body as he tried to force it out past his lips. "I did. I do."

Her breath catches audibly, and she's staring intently at where her toes are peeking out from under the hem of his shirt. "I know," she whispers.

He wants to stop himself—he hates to sound like a girl, after all, even around her, _especially _around her, because all he wants is to be the man she wants him to be and he's positive that being a needy coward doesn't qualify—but before he can, the words slip out.

"Do you think we could have been something? For real?"

She doesn't look at him, her teeth latched onto her lower lip and her shoulders stiff. The silence washes over him like slow-rising water he can't swim through, and minutes tick past before he can't handle it anymore.

"We could have," he answers his own question. "I would have been good to you, if you'd wanted me. I know you never thought that, because I was fooling around with other girls and sexting and all that when you were pregnant, but you never wanted me. You never wanted to be with me. I knew I never had a chance with you. But I would've tried to be better, for you."

He refuses to look at her, staring at a knick in the coffee table in front of him as he speaks, and as soon as the last word leaves his mouth he pushes himself to his feet and stalks towards the kitchen. He's rifling through the cupboard next to the freezer in search of cereal when he hears her padding into the room and stopping close enough that he swears he can feel her body heat radiating out through the shirt he loaned her.

Her fingers tug apprehensively at his t-shirt, pulling him around to face her, and he can't think of a time when she's ever looked so nervous in the entire time he's known her. Her fingers are still clenching gently at his shirt, keeping him from pulling away even if he'd wanted to, and he stares down at her without a single coherent thought in his head.

"Did you mean all of that?" she finally asks, not meeting his eyes.

"Yeah," he says simply. "I did."

Her fingers tighten imperceptibly in his shirt, and she finally looks up to meet his wary gaze. She's looking at him exactly like she did when he sang to her before Beth was born and asked if he could be in the delivery room, only this time there aren't any fake pink eyelashes to distract from the vulnerability that she always tries to desperately to hide.

"You promise?" she whispers, and he can't do anything but nod dumbly—the clichéd words he wants to say_, always_ and _I promise_ and _I want to be the guy you deserve_ too heavy to make their way out of his mouth—because she's leaning up on her toes and pulling him closer by his t-shirt, and his head is tilting down inadvertently. As soon as he's nodded twice she raises the rest of the way up onto her toes and presses a kiss to his mouth.

It's soft and understated and exactly like he'd expect from a sleepy and vulnerable Quinn Fabray and nothing like anything he's ever felt before. His hands clench into fists in an attempt to stop from grabbing her around the waist and hoisting her up onto the counter, he may love her and he may want to do this right this time around, but that doesn't change the fact that he's standing there in his kitchen with the most beautiful girl he's ever seen wearing his t-shirt and kissing him.

She pulls back first, dropping back down off her toes and blushing delicately, and he again fights the desire to pin her against a wall and kiss her until neither of them can stand. Instead—because he's going to be better for her, because she's giving him another chance, because maybe now they can make things work—he pushes a loose curl back out of her face and kisses her gently, whispering _"I promise"_ against her lips.

_I'm running after you/ I'm in love with the way that you're making me wait/ I just want to be catching up to you_ (Hokis)

Puck doesn't know what to expect to happen. He drove her back to her car after she'd changed back into her clothes, and she kissed him goodbye and said she'd call him. Even though he wasn't supposed to, he carried his phone in his pocket at work all day and checked it surreptitiously and obsessively, especially when she didn't show up at her normal time. By the time his shift ended and he was stalking out of the gym, he had himself convinced that she was playing him, that the bitch was back and she'd honed in on his weaknesses—and how easy it would be for her; she _was_ his weakness personified—to get him back for knocking her up, for ruining her life, for hurting her.

Instead, she's waiting by his truck, fidgeting with her hands and shifting her weight back and forth minutely as she waited for him. Her eyes are hidden behind a pair of sunglasses that he recognized as the spare aviator knock-offs he kept on the dash of his truck, and he feels a small smile fighting to show itself at the thought.

"Hey," he says, coming to a stop barely a foot away from her.

"Hey," she offers back.

He hesitates momentarily before leaning down to kiss her on the cheek, smirking at the barely visible flush the spread on her cheeks and moving to toss his bag into the bed of the truck. "So, what's up?

She leans back against the driver's side door, her fingers absentmindedly seeking his out and playing with them as she had been fidgeting with her own earlier. "I was thinking," she starts out slowly, and another twinge of apprehension, scarily similar to what he'd felt as he'd left the gym just minutes ago, forces its way into his throat.

She seems to sense that he's suddenly on guard—or perhaps she can feel the way his shoulders tightened defensively just because she's holding his hand—and she shook her head quickly. "No, no, not like that," she plows ahead, hurriedly. "I was just thinking that… this time, can we do things right? No sneaking around or hiding or whatever. Can we just… go out on dates and hang out and just be teenagers again?"

His shoulders slump in relief, and he can't stop his smile this time. "Definitely," he says confidently. "I want to make things right, too. I want to… I don't know, take you out and bring you flowers and all of that stuff."

She smiles at him, wider than he's seen from her in months, and he can't restrain himself from leaning down and pressing her gently back against the truck as he kisses her. He has to break away for air eventually, and her forehead drops against his shoulder; it feels comfortable and it fits and things feel _right_ for the first time since Finn told her she was pregnant.

"Slow is okay, right?" she mumbles into his shoulder.

"Yeah," he says without hesitation, one hand tracing gently up and down her back. "Slow is fine."

Slow, though, isn't really what happens. Two weeks later, after a date that involved him taking her to play laser tag and letting her slaughter him mercilessly, they make it back to her house and her mom is out for the evening and she invites him inside to watch a movie. It's only 9:30 and he's not ready to go home yet, and they've bone been adhering strictly to their own self-imposed guidelines, so he lets her talk him into watching some black and white film he's never even heard of.

Halfway in, though, she seems to lose interest, and kisses him soundly. There's nothing new about it—though she's clearly not ready for sex, Puck knows he's still gotten further in the last two weeks than Finn ever did—until she pushes him back and climbs on top of him, kissing him furiously until neither of them can breathe and she breaks away, her head dropping into the crook of his shoulder. Her breath is hot across his neck and her voice jolts him right out of the moment when she quietly asks if he has a condom.

Without even meaning to, he sits bolt upright; she squeaks in surprise and almost falls of the couch, saved only by her own cheerleading reflexes and him instinctively reaching out to catch her.

"Sorry!" he says hurriedly. "I just… I mean, really?" He stares at her, wide-eyed, and hates that he feels like he did right before he lost his virginity when he was just two days shy of fourteen, with a sophomore in the back seat of her car in the gravel lot behind the high school. "Are you serious?"

She holds his gaze for a few short seconds before tearing her eyes from his and leaping to her feet. She hurries around the coffee table and pulls her shirt down from where it had ridden up under his hands; she wraps her arms around her stomach and looks anywhere but at him.

Fighting the urge to sigh and taking a moment to make sure he can stand without making a fool of himself and her uncomfortable at the same time, he pushes himself to his feet and shoves his hands in his pockets. "We don't have to do anything," he says awkwardly. "If it's what you want, you know I won't say no, but if it's not, then just…don't."

She starts to pace, her brow furrowed as she mouths words silently to herself in what appears to be a painful personal debate. He watches her, his throat aching at how much he wishes he could make the history between them right, and waits as patiently as he knows how.

"Look, Q," he starts again, after her pacing has made him slightly dizzy. "If you have to think about it this much, you don't want it." His voice is bland, his words blunt, and he prepares himself for her mood to shift suddenly again. Trying to keep up with Quinn was like trying to run hurdles with a missing limb. It could be done, but it wasn't easy and he'd never catch up to her.

"I'm sorry," she mumbles, slamming to a halt. "I thought I could—I thought it was—"

"Quinn, seriously," he says. "It's fine. I promise. We said we're going to do this all the right way this time, and I'm good with that. I'm good with waiting. I kind of like that you're making me," he adds, cursing the flush he feels tingeing his cheeks at her raised eyebrow. He shrugs awkwardly, plopping back down on the couch.

"It feels good, okay? Getting to be that guy," he says uncomfortably. "I kind of like that I have to work for it, that you aren't just all _whatever_ about it and ready to go straight to bumping uglies or whatever." He smirks when she flushes darkly at his phrasing, feeling a little bit of his confidence return. This is what they both want, and they've actually talked about it, and they're okay with it.

"Thanks," she mutters eventually. She doesn't move from where she has her feet rooted on the floor, arms still wound tightly around herself.

"No problem," he says cheerfully. "But…uh. I mean, I think I should probably go, you know?"

Now it's her turn to smirk at him, an amused eyebrow shooting up and a sarcastic comment clearly on the tip of her tongue.

"Nuh-uh," he says, wagging a finger at her. "You don't even get to make fun of me right now."

"Okay, okay," she says, laughter evident in her voice even as she keeps her face straight. "I'm not going to make fun of you."

"Damn right," he grumbles. He stands once more, grabbing his keys off of the end table and stepping around the coffee table. She lets him unwind her arms and put them around his neck so he can lean down to kiss her. "We're good, okay?"

"Okay," she says, kissing him once more. "Thanks."

"Anytime," he says with a wink before pulling away reluctantly and making his way to the door. She keeps a grip on his hand and follows him. "Talk to you tomorrow?"

"Definitely," she says. She squeezes his hand and kisses him on the cheek before shooing him out the door.

As he drives home uncomfortably, even knowing that he's going to be spending a good long while hiding in his room with the door locked and his own vivid imagination, he feels a swell of something warm and proud and _happy_ at the fact that they really are doing things right this time.

_your sad eyes take and own me/ words are unnecessary/ grip the back of your neck and slowly/ move 'til it all becomes alright, all becomes alright_ (Nocturnal)

They do have sex. It's not long after that one awkward night in the middle of that black and white movie that Puck can't remember the name of but will never forget the way it looked flashing behind her as she panicked. When they do have sex for the first time, it's on a Saturday around lunch time two weeks later, and he was over at her house fixing one of their garage doors to appease her mother about the fact that Quinn is dating the boy who got her pregnant a year ago _and_ he's Jewish. She had been out for a run and came into the garage, just as sweaty from her run as he was from wrestling with an uncooperative garage door, and matched his smirk with one of her own before they met in the middle, hands wandering and sliding over slick skin. She had let him press her against the now-never used tool bench near the kitchen door, and he had been about to force himself away when she hooked a leg up around his waist and said that this time, she was ready.

It was as nerve-wracking and terrifying as he had expected it to be, but afterwards she had told him to stay instead of kicking him out. They went out to dinner and made it almost to third base in the car in her driveway before the garage light flashed on and she had pulled away with a reluctant giggle.

After the first time, it happened far more than he ever would have expected. Quinn reasoned it away as her being far more comfortable with sex and her body now that she's shoved a baby out of her vagina—her own drunken words, not his; his entire body had shuddered at the memory of being stupid enough to look when the doctor said the baby was crowning—and as long as there was a condom within easy reach, it kept happening.

One night, when her mother is out of town and thinks Quinn is staying with Santana—initially she had been planning to, but then she found out that Santana had just had a boob job and was growling like a wounded bear because she was in pain and Brittany was gone, so Quinn simply showed up at Puck's doorstep after his mom had gone to bed—he wakes up sometime around three and groggily realizes that she's sitting on the edge of the tiny twin bed, her back to him and her fingers digging tightly into the edge of the mattress, the tightness in her shoulder exposed by the tank top she'd worn to bed.

He waits, staring at her back, for long minutes, to see what she's going to do. When she doesn't move—she barely seems to breathe—he finally yawns loudly to let her know he's awake and sits up , scooting over until his side is pressed against her back. Sleepily, because even though he loves her and is concerned, he'd only been asleep for three hours, he pushes her hair off of her neck and kisses her shoulder (this romantic boyfriend thing is new to him, but he's finding out that he really, really enjoys it. He can touch her almost anytime he wants, chastely or otherwise, fingers skimming across the skin he'd spent years fantasizing about, and she almost always loves it).

"What's wrong?" he rumbles softly. He shifts, turning so he can wrap his arms around her waist and pull her back against his chest. He can feel her heartbeat fluttering through her back, echoing in his own chest.

She shakes her head, not sasying a word, and he tugs her around until she's facing him. She avoids looking at him, teeth tucked securely around her lower lip, and shakes her head again. "Nothing," she says hoarsely. "I'm fine."

"Right, and I'm not a hot Jewish sex shark," he says wryly. "Come on, Q, talk to me." His tone is light but the words feel heavy as they leave his lips. He's known for weeks that she isn't sleeping well. She hides the circles under her eyes perfectly with make-up, but make-up washes off or is smudged away eventually, and they're always there.

She just shakes her head again, and he sighs, scrolling through a list in his mind of what might be bothering her. Beth is at the top, and her dad, the awkward relationship she now has with her mom, the fact that her sister isn't speaking to her anymore, that she'd already told him how disappointed she was that Santana got breast implants at sixteen.

His breath stalls out when he pauses and realizes that he should probably be at the top of the list as well. Because summer is half over and the happy bubble they've had for the past month will end when school starts and God knows they're going to face an Inquisition and a half when Finn gets back from his family trip and Berry finds out. Because Quinn is analytical and defensive to a fault, and for all he knows, she's trying to think up a way to either hide them from the world or end it before she gets hurt.

He finally catches her eyes, and the guilt, the sorrow, the frustration spilling out of them is enough to confirm what he'd half-hoped were morbid imaginings. She tears her eyes away from him once more, and he feel a bit like someone kicked him in the chest.

Finally, because he can't think of anything else to do, because he never knows the right thing to say, he lays down and pulls her on top of him and kisses her. She moves on top of him slowly, and he keeps a hand softly on the back of her neck, holding her to him and refusing to let her go except to tug her shirt off.

He thinks, desperately, that even if he doesn't have the right words or all—_any_—of the answers, maybe he can keep her from running away if he's gentle enough.

He wakes up in the morning and she's gone. He tells himself it's because she knows when his mother will wake up and doesn't want to be there when she does, and lets the lie settle uncomfortably in his stomach as he lays there, inhaling the fading scent of her perfume.

_ringing in my head/ all the things you've said/ all the things you've done/ i wish i could compromise/ but there's only one way to go_ (Arch Drive Goodbye)

A week before school starts, they have a fight like he never expected. There had been arguments before—when he wanted to go to an action movie and she wanted to stay home and watch a documentary on Netflix, when she wanted to spend all afternoon browsing through bookstores and he wanted to play laser tag, when he laughed at a crude joke and women and she lectured him on misogyny—but they'd never _fought_.

Now, though, they're fighting, and he's throwing everything he has into it because he refuses—_refuses_—to let her take the easy way out.

"This is bullshit," he throws at her, glaring from where he stands in the Fabray's garage. He had been changing the oil in her mother's car to stay on her good side when Quinn had come out and suggested, in the most roundabout way possible, that maybe they should keep their relationship a secret once school started. "Why can't you just be okay with us? It's been months! We're good together. What's so wrong with that?"

"I'm just not ready for a public commitment," she grinds out, glaring back just as darkly.

He scoffs, throwing a socket wrench loudly into the toolbox. "A public commitment?" he repeats. "It's high school, Quinn! You're not the president or whatever."

"I don't want people to know," she snaps. "It's not because I'm ashamed of you or of us, because I'm _not_, but I'm just not ready to be in the spotlight again, and you know damn well that if step into school holding hands on Monday, we're going to be getting so much crap from all sides."

"We'll be fine, though!" he says. He hates that desperation is already starting to show through in his voice. "We went through so much worse last year and you know it. We can handle whatever they throw at us. _You_ can handle anything they throw at you."

"I can't," she whispers, and suddenly, she's standing in front of him with all of the anger leeching out of her, looking as broken as she did the night he saw her sitting on her car at the park. "I can't do it again, Puck."

"Hey," he says lowly. "Don't say that, it's not true." He moves to pull her towards him, but hesitates when he sees the grease staining his hands. Hurriedly, he yanks a rag out of his back pocket and scrubs at his hands, suddenly ashamed of how blue collar he feels.

"It is," she says, her voice soft. "I'm not strong enough to do that again. I just can't, okay? I survived last year because I didn't have a choice, because there was nothing I could do to control it. But we have a _choice_ this year, Puck. There's an opportunity to be on top again, and when we're on top, when things are back how they were a year ago, we can walk around holding hands and making out between classes. But I just can't do it. Not right now."

"This is bullshit," he repeats. The anger that had vanished at her obvious terror of what the new school year held for them returned in full force, shoving up through his chest and seeping into his words. "You're totally fine dealing with whatever they could do, you _know_ you can, but you just think it's too hard or whatever. You don't want to try. And that's crap, because I've been trying so hard this entire time, and now you're going to give up? That's bullshit."

"Don't you _dare_," she snapped at him, her chin bolting up so she can glare at him once more. "You think you're the only one who's been trying this entire time? You think I'm not _petrified_ half of the time? My mom could decide randomly that she doesn't like you and throw me out like last time. I could lose everything because my family hates that you're the Jewish guy who got me pregnant, so don't you dare say I haven't been trying just as hard as you have."

"So why are you going to quit now, then?" he shouts. "What makes you think that whatever could happen at school would be worse than what your mom could do?"

"I need somewhere that's good!" she bellows. "I don't get that at home anymore, and I _need_ that in at least one part of my life."

"So, what, you need a little more control in your life, so you're kicking me to the curb?" he sneers. Fury is easier to handle than dejection, sorrow, the voice in the back of his head whispering that he'd never been good enough for her anyways. "Well, congratulations then, Fabray. You win. I'm done."

"What?" she says incredulously. "You're giving up? Just like that?"

"What the hell else am I supposed to do?" He hurls the rag in his hands at the toolbox as well, wishing it would slam loudly enough to shock her senses, to make her see that this isn't what she wants, isn't what she needs. Instead, it flops across the edge of the toolbox with barely a sound, hanging limply and pathetically over a corner. "I'm not going to let you pretend there's nothing happening. Not again. You treated me like shit all last year, and maybe I deserved it then, but I sure as hell don't now."

"That's not what I'm doing," she grinds out. He knows it's a lost cause as soon as he sees her mask sliding back into place, her shoulders squaring subtly and chin lifting the slightest bit as she faces him, arms crossed over her chest. "And if you can't figure that out, then maybe you should just go."

"Fine," he sneers. "Have fun going back to that life you liked so much, Q." He grabs his toolbox and shoves past her, throwing it in the truck and not caring that all of his tools are spilling out onto the floorboards. He leaves a layer of rubber on the driveway as he roars out of the neighborhood, and hides in his anger until he gets home and wonders if he just let go of the best thing that ever happened to him.

_when I showed up and he was there/ I tried my best to grin and bear/ and took the stairs but didn't stop at the street/ and as we speak I'm going down_ (Think Twice)

The beginning of school is unbearable. She's been ignoring his calls and refusing to answer the door whenever he comes to her house ever since she sent him away, not coming into the gym when he's working, but now he sees her every day between classes and in glee and it physically _hurts._

He makes it through the first three days before he starts cutting classes again. They'd spoken about his schoolwork over the summer, Quinn determined to convince him that he had plenty of brains to muster more than a C average and promising to help him study if he would just stay in class and _try_. The first time he walks past the geometry classroom instead of going in, it feels a little bit like triumph. He strolls on past Mr. Scheu's attempts to get his attention and makes his way to the hidden alcove behind the boys' locker room, where he sits for the rest of the day, listening to his iPod and smoking cigarettes—another way of sticking it to Quinn, who had refused to kiss him when he smelled like tobacco.

The closest he comes to speaking to her is when he goes to visit Kurt and Mr. Hummel in the hospital after Burt's heart attack. He's shuffling awkwardly out of the room after Kurt's left in search of coffee when Rachel and Mercedes and Quinn round the corner together. Rachel immediately bounds up to him, concern and worry and surprise written across her always-open features, and quizzes him about Mr. Hummel. He mumbles out something he can't remember and doesn't feel it at all when she puts her hand gently on his forearm; all he can do is try not to look at the heartbreaking look in Quinn's eyes.

Not long after Mr. Hummel is out of the hospital and the weight of unnatural concern is replaced by the anger and sadness that had taken a brief reprieve, he finds himself half-drunk and lounging in the bed of his truck with some football teammate's friend's older brother, splitting a case of beer and spitting sunflower seeds and complaining about how much their lives suck. The older boy—Puck doesn't know how old he is, or even what his name is (Thomas? Tyler?)—starts off on a rant about how he needs money, and somehow, Puck finds himself being talked into trying to steal an ATM from a gas station.

The entire time he's in juvie, the only person to visit him besides his family is Quinn. She sits on the other side of the picnic table, making herself as thin as possible to keep space from the other visitors in the room, and stares at him blankly without saying a word. He simply slumps back and stares right back, because it seems like a better idea than breaking down and telling her how much he hates it here, how he's afraid of almost everyone in there, how he still wants to be with her.

She only visits the one time, and neither of them says a word the entire time. He watches her go, back straight and shoulders square under her Cheerios jacket as she walks off. Suddenly, irrationally, he hates the uniform she's wearing.

The first place he goes after his mother lets him out of her sight when he's released is to the Fabray's house. Her mother doesn't threaten to call the police when she answers the door, which he takes as a sign that Quinn hadn't told her where he'd been, but she coughs awkwardly and hesitates before telling him to go on into the living room.

He slams to a halt when he walks in and sees her sitting next to the new kid, blond heads bowed towards one another while she neatly inks musical notes onto the staff paper in her lap. A guitar that isn't his is sitting on the coffee table, a backpack and letter jacket that aren't his on the floor at the end of the couch.

The scuff of his shoes on the floor draws both of their attention, and if he weren't so suddenly numb, he'd enjoy the flash of guilt that crosses her face and the stricken look on Sam's. Blandly, he thinks that at least she didn't go flying back to Finn.

Clenching his fingers around his keys, he shoves his fists into his pockets and turns around silently, taking measured steps out of the room and past Mrs. Fabray and down the stairs from the porch. His boots clomp heavily against the wooden stairs, echoing under the porch, and he fights the urge to turn around and run back inside and punch Sam's lights out. Distantly, as he slams his way into his truck and starts to pull away, he notices Quinn in the front door, calling after him.

When he gets home, he shoots a raunchy text message to Santana. An hour later, she's sneaking in through his window and he fucks her harder than he ever did when they were "dating", they way he never wanted to with Quinn.

She doesn't stay, but he knows this won't be a one-time thing. He stares at the ceiling and decides, once and for all, that he's done with Quinn Fabray.


End file.
